19 January 2017

Iranian authorities are exposing their “utterly brutal sense of justice” by continuing to carry out “cruel and inhuman” corporal punishments including floggings, amputations, and forced blinding, Amnesty International charged on Wednesday.

Hundreds of prisoners are flogged in Iran each year, sometimes in public, Amnesty noted. In the latest flogging case on January 5, a journalist was lashed 40 times in Esfahan Province after being convicted of inaccurately reporting the number of motorcycles confiscated by local authorities.

“The authorities’ prolific use of corporal punishment, including flogging, amputation and blinding, throughout 2016 highlights the inhumanity of a justice system that legalizes brutality,” said Randa Habib, Amnesty’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“These cruel and inhuman punishments are a shocking assault on human dignity and violate the absolute international prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment,” she added. “The latest flogging of a journalist raises alarms that the authorities intend to continue the spree of cruel punishments we have witnessed over the past year into 2017.” [TheTower.org] Read more